Immanuel Kant Research Paper

Immanuel Kant was a philosopher who lived during the Enlightenment which was a

period in European intellectual history characterized by reason and a willingness to challenge

traditional assumptions. One of the mottos of the enlightenment was “Have courage to use your

own reason” (Kant, page 85). Grendlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Foundations of the

Metaphysics of Morals) was published in 1785. In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,

Kant set forth several common “categorical imperatives” to develop a clearer understanding of

moral law.

In the 1990’s, the Louisiana Department of Education adopted seven standards for school

leaders. One of the standards referred to ethics. It had eight performance indicators, such as

modeling ethical

behavior, respecting the rights of others, and minimizing personal bias. When
Spencer J. Maxcy and his colleagues asked school principals in Louisiana to rank the standards
in order of usefulness, the majority of principals ranked the standard about ethics as the most
important. When Maxcy asked them which area should receive the most attentions during
training, they gave the ethics standard the lowest priority (question lead from Dr. Watras, 914).
Immanuel Kant would agree with school principals who believe that instruction in ethics
is not required to perform correctly or honorably if one assumes ‘honorably’ is synonymous with
‘morally. According to Kant, morality is known and universally understood regardless of one’s
culture. “It would be easy to show how common human reason knows well how to distinguish
what is good, what is bad, and what is consistent to inconsistent with duty” (Kant, page 20).
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Every human knows the moral law through their own will and the will is the desire to follow the
moral law. “Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be
called good, without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and the
other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as
qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of
nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them,
and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts
of fortune (Kant, page 9).
According to Kant, moral truths are not received from on high through divine revelation
or imitation.

“Nor could one give poorer counsel to morality than to attempt to derive it from

examples; even the Holy One of the Gospel must be compared with our ideal of moral perfection

(Kant, page 25). Kant wrote that the supreme principle of morality should be based on pure

reason independent of all experiences (Kant, page 25). The purpose of reason, according to

Kant, is only to influence a will that is good with no other motive. There is no other purpose.

“To be sure, common human reason does not think of it abstractly in such a universal form but it

always has it in view and uses it as the standard of its judgments. Without in the least teaching

common reason anything new, we need only to draw its attention to its own principle, in the

manner of Socrates, thus showing that neither science nor philosophy is needed to know what

one has to do in order to be honest and good, and even wise and virtuous. We might have

conjectured beforehand that the knowledge of what everyone is obliged to do and thus also to

know would be within the reach of everyone, even the most ordinary man. Here we cannot but

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admire the great advantages which the practical faculty of judgment has over the theoretical in
ordinary human understanding” (Kant, page 20).
True moral principles must not be based on any previous knowledge of right and wrong
or any experience. Kant believed that moral principles have validity in themselves regardless of
experience. “The concept of a world of understanding is therefore only a standpoint which
reason sees itself forced to take outside of appearances” (Kant, page 78). Reason is a nonempirical
activity. While one assumes that principals have an innate sense of right and wrong,
experience and assumptions cannot determine ethics. “It is clear that no experience can give
occasion for inferring the possibility of such apodictic laws (Kant, page 24). Not all experiences
are as they appear. According to Kant, we cannot rely on our own experience or expectations
because all that we perceive is the appearance of things. We are parts of nature and under the
laws of nature. Behind man, there is his ego and desire for sensual desires and the only pure
activity in man is his ability to reason freely (Kant, page xv). Immanuel Kant believed that virtue
does not ensure morality and it may even conflict with it. He minimized the role of practical
intelligence and required the application of simple logical rules in ethics (Kant, page xvii).
Therefore, Kant would contend that there is value for the principals in the training of ethics.
Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic.
The science of freedom is called ethics and ethics is the theory of morals (Kant, page 3). This
examination of ethics is helpful for educators in a complicated profession where daily, difficult
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decisions need to be defended. Educators must rely on their instinct and experiences to be
effective in the schools, but this instinct and experience must not be their guide when it applies to
moral laws. “Not only are moral laws together with their principles essentially different from all
practical knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests solely
on its pure part” (Kant, page 5). We must derive moral law from reason and every action from
educators should follow the moral law without fear or benefit of consequence. For an act to be a
moral act, it must not be contingent on anything else for according to Kant, one has to develop
the concept of a will which is to be esteemed as good of itself without regard to anything else
(Kant, page 13).
Kant determined his view of ethics by using logical analysis to understand reason. Kant
wanted to examine morality so that he could construct a system of moral laws which could be
intellectually defended against criticism (Kant, page vii). He wanted to examine the principle of
law that makes something moral. Kant believed that an action is not truly moral unless it is done
because a law is acknowledged as absolutely and universally binding” (Kant, page x). He asked,
“Is it not of the utmost necessity to construct a pure moral philosophy which is completely freed
from everything which may be only empirical (Kant, page 5)?
Kant believed that human believe that they have a free will but “they do not distinguish
the motives which are presented completely a priori (deduced) by reason alone, and which are
thus moral in the proper sense of the word, from the empirical motives which the understanding
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by comparing experiences, elevates to universal concepts” (Kant, page 7). Kant presumed that
the will of every human is the desire to follow the moral law and “when practical reason thinks
itself into an intelligible world, it does in no way transcend its limits (Kant, page 77). Kant
believed that true freedom of the will gives one dignity and when one chooses morality, then
they have autonomy. The “freedom of the will” and a “will” under moral law are identical
according to Kant (Kant, page 65). “The proposition that the will is a law to itself in all its
actions, however, only expresses the principle that we should act according to no other maxim
than that which can also have itself as a universal law for its object” (Kant, page 65). When we
choose laws that have universality, then we use reason to determine our own moral law which
makes us free.
Principals and educators must then realize that, according to Kant, each person is able to
pursue their own moral objective as an “end” and not a “mean”. Freedom gives one dignity.
“Ends” should self govern. To behave morally, everyone should govern as an end.
Consequently, noone would then take advantage of anyone. “It is not enough to ascribe freedom
to our will, on any grounds whatever, if we do not also have sufficient grounds for attributing it
to all rational beings (Kant, page 66). Because it is applicable in all circumstances, every
rational being must act is if his/her maxims were at all times legislative. “The formal principal
of these maxims is: so act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law
of all rational beings” (Kant, page 57).

When people do not treat others as “ends, they violate

they do not consider universal law and they contradict the principles of reason.

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The process of thinking that Kant used to drive the proper way to act in conflicting

situations is that moral law is separate from the law of consequences or benefit. There is always

going to be a conflict of inclination vs. the moral law. This is when duty must take precedence

over all other interest and motivations. Duty is the constraint to do the act from the moral law.

“If we attend to our experience of the way men act, we meet frequents, justified complaints that

cannot cite a single sure example of the disposition to act from pure duty” (Kant, page 22).

Good will cannot consider motivation or outcome. To demonstrate the concept of will, Kant

explored “duty”. Kant wrote, “a completely isolated metaphysics of morals, mixed with no

anthropology, no theology, no physics or hyperphysics, and even less with occult qualities, is not

only an indispensable substrate of all theoretically sound and definite knowledge of duties; it is

also a desideratum of the highest importance to the actual fulfillment of its precepts (Kant,

page
26). Obedience to the moral law cannot be based on any specific inclination. One must not
consider the consequences of an action when making a decision for morality, for then one is no
longer moral. He omitted all actions which are recognized as opposed to “duty” (Kant, page 13).
Kant set up three general propositions about duty. First, actions are morally worthwhile
when they are undertaken for the sake of duty alone. People may not act in conformity with duty
out of self-interest or inclination. The second proposition is that actions are judged not
according to the purpose they were meant to bring about, but rather by the "maxim" that served
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as their motivation. When someone undertakes an action with no other motivation than a sense of
duty, they are doing so because they have recognized a moral principle that is valid a priori.